


Liminality

by mts



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Genre: A Spy's Goodbye, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Parting Shot, a lil late but I found the party, implied PTSD, referenced miscarriage, team fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mts/pseuds/mts
Summary: A meandering character study of Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter through the eyes of their family in the aftermath of Russia.Or, the team packs up Bobbi and Hunter's belongings and learns a bit more about them as they prepare to send them off into the unknown.
Relationships: Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie & Bobbi Morse, Bobbi Morse & Jemma Simmons, Bobbi Morse & Natasha Romanov, Bobbi Morse & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Clint Barton & Bobbi Morse, Isabelle Hartley & Bobbi Morse, Isabelle Hartley & Lance Hunter & Idaho, Lance Hunter & Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, Lance Hunter & Jemma Simmons, Lance Hunter & Melinda May, Lance Hunter & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse, Leo Fitz & Lance Hunter, Melinda May & Bobbi Morse, Phil Coulson & Bobbi Morse, Phil Coulson & Lance Hunter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56





	Liminality

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me, publishing on AO3 for the first time in 2 years and 15 days!

When Coulson boards the Quinjet, even May expects that Bobbi and Hunter will file in behind him, a little worse for the wear, but coming out on top, as usual. The thick silence is sharp against the shell shock when Coulson announces that no, Bobbi and Hunter have not come out on top, have barely come out at all, in fact.

Everyone goes their separate ways.

There’s no one way to process the magnitude of the reality their friends have found themselves in, have decided on. The immense sacrifice weighs on each conscience. Sure, they’ve all dedicated their lives to SHIELD, and imagine they’d have been able to bow out as gracefully as Bobbi and Hunter have, but there is a pervasive undercurrent of relief that they don’t have to face that circumstance for themselves.

May is the one to make her way down the hall of bedrooms, stopping in front of Hunter’s door and punching in the code. Coulson’s busy trying to determine where to send the couple’s belongings, and somebody has to start the painful process of packing up. Hunter’s room is easier, because he hardly lived there to begin with, having essentially moved into Bobbi’s room following her torture and never quite moving out again.

The process is fairly simple. May leaves the SHIELD issued bedding, tucked precisely into every angle by the good little soldier still left in Hunter after all this time away from the service. 

Hunter keeps-kept- a few old shirts and pairs of jeans rolled up in the large bureau with some socks and underwear. The whole wardrobe fits into one box, with room to spare.

The closet is pretty much the same, save for a box of old SAS memorabilia which May packs with careful reverence, and some weaponry she also packs carefully.

May supposes it’s difficult to accumulate material comforts if you can’t trust life to keep you in one place long enough to enjoy them. Best to live light, in case you need to jet on a moment’s notice. May thanks Hunter’s prior lifestyles for that and laughs at the similitude between the life of a soldier and the life of a mercenary.

A glint catches in the corner of May’s vision and she finds a pair of dog tags strung up on the bedside lamp and a framed photo of Bobbi and Hunter in some dingy bar, rustic and tackily decorated with horseshoes along the wood paneling. She carefully removes the tags and takes the photo from the frame, tucking them into the pocket of the jeans for safe keeping.

May takes one final glance around the barren room which looks almost as it did when she entered and with a barely audible sigh, about-faces into the doorway, the door shutting behind her with a definitive click.

She places Hunter’s box on the floor outside his room and as she strolls over to Bobbi’s door, notices one of the boxes she’d left outside is no longer there.

May debates turning around for a moment, but she has never been one to leave the hard work to anyone else. And so, as she punches in the code, she steels herself for who she will find on the other side of the door.

As the room comes into view, so too does Mack, and with him, a wave of emotion that hits May despite her preparations.

He sits on the floor at the side of the bed, clutching a framed photo with silent tears streaming down his cheeks. He does not acknowledge the new presence in the room but when May places a hand on his shoulder, he doesn’t startle. As she looks over his shoulder he tilts the frame up so she can see it.

Bobbi and Hunter at the center, dressed to the nines as they stare into each other’s eyes, smiles lighting up the room, surrounded by equally happy faces of Isabelle Hartley, Victoria Hand, Idaho, and Mack himself.

“Their wedding celebration. Didn’t get a chance to celebrate for months ‘cause of SHIELD. That was a good day”, Mack explains. “Hunter made his own schedule at that point and we caught Bobbi between missions. Threatened Fury with mass-resignation if he didn’t allow us all to be there.”

May chuckles at that.

Before she can reply the door opens again and Mack stands up, wipes his face with both hands. They nod in greeting to the familiar faces of Fitz, Simmons, Daisy, and Coulson as they cross the threshold.

They stand there for a moment, no one knowing where to look, what to say.

Coulson clears his throat.

“Daisy was able to ascertain that the Russians are sending Bobbi and Hunter to New York tomorrow. Figured the least we could do was have their things waiting for them when they get there,” he says by way of explanation.

The process is slow-going at first, especially considering there are six pairs of hands to help out. But nobody wants to pack away a friend’s things, pack away the only tangible links that remain.

Fitz comes away with an inhaler, left on the side table, and his chest seizes as he thinks back on all the progress Bobbi made to get herself field-ready again only to throw it out the window for SHIELD, for him, for everyone standing in this room.

He closes his fist around it, the closest he can get to a much-needed hug before tossing it in his box. He finds himself wondering if he’d have been as selfless, but packs away the rest of Bobbi’s nightstand without incident.

Jemma starts with what must be Hunter’s bedside table, given the football magazines she finds stuffed in the drawer. She places a special issue featuring Manchester United on the cover at the top of the stack, flashing the cover to Fitz. They share a subdued smirk at the thought of taking the piss out of Hunter, but their faces fall as soon as they realize it will likely be the last time they do so.

Simmons goes to close the drawer after emptying it and finds that it won’t shut completely. Nothing appears to be inside of it but the jam remains, so she feels around the top of it and comes away with a worn leather wallet.

She recognizes it immediately as Bobbi’s SHIELD ID and badge come into view. She’s surprised to see Hunter has kept it, especially considering his early feelings for SHIELD. Then again, she supposes, it was SHIELD that brought them together. And it’s the couples’ collective love of SHIELD, sense of duty to the mission that winds up ripping them from their family in the end.

Shaking her head to clear it of this line of thought, Jemma tries to remind herself that they chose this, for this family they’ve carved out. She takes the wallet, tracing the badge itself before realizing it feels heavier than hers ever had.

Curiosity gets the best of her and she sits on the bed as she goes through its contents. She comes away with memorial cards for Isabelle Hartley, Idaho, a photo of Hunter and his old SAS buddies dressed in fatigues in the desert, and then a frayed black and white image that makes her gasp involuntarily, dropping the wallet into her lap.

The rooms other occupants look at her, as she looks at the image.

May, who is close enough to get a good look, turns away almost immediately, face pained., mouth drawn in a frown

Daisy and Fitz whip toward Jemma in confusion before their eyes fall to the ultrasound in her hand and they look away too.

Mack tenses, looks first at Jemma, then cautiously at Coulson who tilts his head, and then back at Jemma, “Budapest was a rough one,”, which explains both everything and nothing. But Mack can’t explain, won’t let himself back to that time, can’t be drawn into fantasies of playdates between his sweet Hope and Baby Morse (not Baby Hunter, because who is Lance Hunter to deny his wife who just gave him the world?). 

Everyone gets back to their respective box, packing quietly once more.

Jemma makes sure to carefully place each item back in the wallet, taking extra care to pack the ultrasound away so as not to fray the already fragile edges, which have quite obviously been 

Coulson discreetly sweeps a bottle of insomnia meds prescribed to one Lance Hunter into his box as he clears the top of a dresser covered in personal hygiene products, medications, and knickknacks. He wonders if Hunter will sleep easier knowing now that the only demons they’ve got to run from are the demons they’ve fought and beaten in the past.

He knows it can’t be that simple, but hopes it brings a sense of comfort nonetheless. From the looks Coulson got of them, Bobbi and Hunter could use the shut eye.

Realistically though, he knows they won’t sleep until they touch down on American soil, won’t rest for much longer than that. This knowledge sits bitterly in his mouth as he packs away Bobbi’s pain medication-stubbornly full, used sparingly for intense flareups- and the antidepressants prescribed to both of them. The sacrifices never end, wouldn’t have ended even if the two were just a little more selfish and had come back with him to the Bus.

Still, this was not a sacrifice he had envisioned for them. He closes his box up with tape and turns back to the now empty room.

The other five members of the team seem to have also finished up with their boxes. All that’s left now are a collection of books. Daisy picks up a worn copy of Anna Karenina, turns it over in her hands, the spine creased significantly.

She’s not a big reader and she still can’t really read Russian, but she opens it hoping to prolong the inevitable.

Inside the front cover, her eyes are drawn to a neatly handwritten note which she assumes to be addressed to Bobbi, given that she doesn’t think Hunter would be called sestra, nor would Hunter read anything longer than a football magazine. At the bottom, the note is signed simply, “H”, which she recognizes as the English letter N from her Russian hacking stint and another writer has hastily scribbled and underlined “and C” next to it in English.

She thinks for a minute about how many times Bobbi has read this behemoth of a book, given how cracked the spine is, marveling at her attention span, her linguistic abilities, and mourning the fact Bobbi will not get to tease the team about their own embarrassing skills when it hits her:

“Bobbi knows the Avengers?”

Coulson and May share a look and Mack actually cracks a small smile as he informs, “More than knows ‘em. She was on Fury’s shortlist to become one. And that booklet Jemma’s reading is her research on the Super Solider Serum.”

Daisy, Jemma, and Fitz all look astounded.

“What a power couple,” Daisy says, wistful.  
  
Fitz still looks like he’s piecing everything together in his mind, and in a way, he is. It’s a shock to think you know someone, only to learn more about them when they’re gone than you ever had when they were here.  
  
Jemma speed-reads through Bobbi’s dissertation and declares, “it’s no wonder SHIELD was interested in her; this is a thing of beauty...quite the loss for Sci-Tech.”  
  
May nods solemnly, a hint of smirk on her lips as she adds, “But a helluva win for Operations.”  
  
“Yeah, she and Barton were a force to be reckoned with” Mack adds.  
  
Coulson chuckles, “And then came Romanoff. Gasoline meet fire.”  
  
Coulson, Mack and May both shake their heads, remembering missions of yore with the fearsome trio.  
  
Jemma, Daisy, and Fitz get lost in their heads too, imagining the chaotic fury of two Avengers and one Bobbi Morse reigning down on their enemies. This leads each agent into reminiscence of their own missions with Bobbi and Hunter, and all too suddenly the books have been packed away, and there is nothing left for them there.  
  
They file out of the room, one by one, and the door closes with a resounding thud.  
  
May heads to the cockpit where she redirects the plane to New York and the rest of the team branch off into the comfort of their own bunks, each clinging to lukewarm memories, whispered shadows of beloved friends.  
  
It goes without saying Daisy would be tracking them pair as soon as their plane hit the tarmac, for her own piece of mind. And when Mack comes to her and asks her to get the team a firm location once Bobbi and Hunter settle in, she is almost insulted.  
  
The team gathers in a vacant alley just outside Teddy’s Bar, go over the plan once more to ensure their better-than-nothing goodbye goes off without endangering their friends, lest their disavowals be for naught.  
  
And then they trickle in, slowly, careful not to draw much more than the waitress’s attention as they blend themselves into the background around Bobbi and Hunter, and the tails they’ve no doubt had on them since they entered the airport in Russia.  
  
It’s miraculous that the pair don’t spot the team before they make themselves known, but none of the team can fault them for giving in to the unimaginable magnitude of the situation.

And in that moment, when their eyes finally meet, each feels really, truly, deeply seen by Bobbi and Hunter, and nothing else matters. Individually and collectively, they can only hope their eyes convey the love, the admiration, the appreciation none of them can voice for a sacrifice none of them can quite fathom the consequences of.

Bobbi and Hunter’s watery smiles and shaky toasts to each member confirm that while silent, their wishes have been heard, and heeded. Each shot goes down like glass, settling in jagged pieces around Bobbi and Hunter’s hearts, the sweetest bitterness they’ll ever taste.   
  
Mack does his best to make the moment last, stares deep into Hunter’s eyes and then Bobbi’s in equal measure, to make them feel his love for as long as time will let him.  
  
Cruelly, the moment passes and the team retreat back to the Bus, while Bobbi and Hunter sit in the hurt they’ve chosen for themselves, uncomfortable but content in the knowledge that their friends-their family, really- will live to fight another day.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this made sense. I am a bad self-editor and kept having ideas which I wanted to flesh out more but simply sprinkled in instead because I am tired. Any who, thank you for reading. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and that this fic brought a welcomed distraction into your life!


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